Can We Envision Student Mobility Without Flying?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to cross the Atlantic… by wind-powered cargo ship. Aboard a Neoliner, “Mission Possible” and students from SKEMA Raleigh are experimenting with an alternative to air travel. A slow Atlantic crossing that reshapes our relationship with time and redefines the meaning of travel. But is it economically viable?

At the beginning of May, ten students from the SKEMA Raleigh campus will return to Europe using a mode of transport unlike any other. At the end of their semester in the United States, they will board in Baltimore for a Transatlantic crossing by ship. No jet lag, no cramped seat, no airplane window over the wing. Ahead of them: two to three weeks at sea aboard the brand-new Neoliner, a cargo vessel powered primarily by wind, launched in October 2025.

This journey – both modest and radical – serves as a real-world laboratory for a simple question: can we imagine international student mobility that no longer relies almost exclusively on air travel?

The Climate Blind Spot of Student Mobility

Each year, several million students travel across the globe to study, complete internships, or take part in academic exchanges. In 2024, OECD countries welcomed more than 1.8 million internationally mobile students (OECD, 2025). This mobility, central to the internationalization of universities, relies primarily on air transport and represents the largest share of higher education institutions’ carbon footprints (Davies, 2016; Davies and Dunk, 2015).

Surprisingly, the issue remains largely under-discussed. Mobility is typically framed as inherently virtuous – promoting cultural openness, equal opportunity, and the training of global elites – while its climate externalities are rarely addressed. Although many universities have begun to examine the problem, initiatives remain limited and have yet to scale (Hall, 2024; Sunley et al., 2025).

Crossing the Atlantic Differently

Next-generation wind-powered cargo ships are not leisure sailboats. They are commercial vessels designed primarily to transport freight while using wind as their main, or dominant, source of propulsion. Their length ranges from 50 to 140 meters, and some offer up to 12 passenger berths. This limit is imposed by international conventions (SOLAS) to avoid classification as “passenger ships,” which would entail far stricter safety requirements and significantly higher operating costs. On board these sailing cargo ships, you are not on a cruise. You share a working space, adapt to the ship’s rhythm, accept weather-related uncertainty, and submit to the contingencies of the journey. Transport is no longer just a means to an end, it becomes lived time.

For students, the crossing becomes simultaneously a journey, a learning immersion, and an object of observation. But are they ready for such an experience? How much does it cost? And under what conditions could it be scaled?

Is There Student demand? The Example of SKEMA in Raleigh

After several years of reflection and research, and following fundraising efforts among alumni and philanthropic foundations, SKEMA Business School approved the “Mission Possible” project in March 2025. In July 2025, the school offered students on its Raleigh, North Carolina campus during the second semester of 2025–2026 the opportunity to return to Europe aboard the Neoliner sailing cargo ship – for €500 per passenger instead of the public price of €3,200. The goal was to match the cost of a Raleigh – Paris plane ticket. Eleven students were selected for the project, accompanied by a SKEMA professor tasked with evaluating the initiative and documenting feedback.

The Public Ticket Price: an Insurmountable Barrier?

SKEMA was able to raise funds to test this alternative form of mobility, but it is difficult to imagine financing larger cohorts of students on a recurring basis. The price of a sailing cargo crossing includes accommodation for nearly two weeks, meals, and a unique immersive experience – but at over €3,000 per passenger, a transatlantic crossing leaves room to think. How can such an offer be made sustainably affordable for internationally mobile students?

Neoline and the company Sailcoop, which markets the tickets, currently charge €200 per day per passenger. This rate is close to the average daily fare (€185) of major cruise operators in 2025. Given that average operating costs (excluding onboard revenue-related expenses) are around €130 per passenger per day, the operating margin is estimated at €50 to €70. The current public price reflects a full-cost model spread across a very small number of passengers. It says nothing about the marginal cost of adding an extra passenger to a ship already operating for freight. In that sense, this price is not an economic inevitability.

When the Passenger Becomes Marginal Revenue

In the economic model of a sailing cargo ship, most costs -ship construction, crew, regulatory compliance, insurance, maintenance – are covered by freight operations.

Adding a passenger does not alter the vessel’s cost structure. Instead he or she generates only incremental costs directly tied to their presence: meals, water, consumables, administrative formalities, and possible port fees related to boarding.

If we reason in terms of marginal cost rather than full cost -that is, if we consider only the additional expenses generated by one passenger, without allocating the ship’s total costs to the ticket price – the scale changes dramatically. By aggregating realistic incremental costs (three meals per day, consumables, administration, reasonable port fees), the daily cost per passenger falls between €35 and €65. For a 15-day crossing, that amounts to €500 to €1,000, depending on assumptions. This estimate is not naive optimism; it follows a classic transport economics logic, where an additional service can be offered at low cost once core assets are already financed by a primary activity.

A Credible Pathway: Pricing at “Incremental Cost”

In the short term, the most realistic way to make wind-powered transport affordable for students is a targeted mechanism: selling a portion of passenger berths at incremental cost, with no margin, since freight already covers most expenses. In this model, passengers do not pay for the ship, they only pay for what they add. The operator does not lose money but forgoes margin on a secondary revenue stream. Ticket prices then become compatible with student budgets. For shipowners to benefit from this initiative, public support would need to compensate for lost revenue in the name of the general interest. France is a pioneer in wind-powered maritime transport. Supporting this emerging industry and fostering low-carbon student mobility is not a cost, it is an investment in the future. One key question remains: who should these seats be reserved for?

The most robust answer is to move beyond the tourism market and embrace a public-interest logic: tickets reserved for students; selection based on academic projects; commitments to produce outputs (logbooks, data, science communication). The crossing becomes a tool for learning and knowledge production, not a subsidized cruise. Public support does not buy a trip; it funds a pedagogical experiment in low-carbon mobility.

A Limited but Symbollically Powerful Impact

Let’s be clear: even with announced shipbuilding projects, the number of passenger berths on sailing cargo ships currently amounts to only a few hundred per year – soon a few thousand. This is far from replacing air travel. But the issue is not about the scale, but rather cultural and political. The mere existence of a credible alternative challenges the idea that aviation is the only horizon for international mobility. It introduces choice, long timeframes, and a renewed reflection on what it means “to travel” in a climate-constrained world.

Wind-powered crossings will not replace airplanes. But they do call into question our academic calendars, our relationship to speed, and the place we assign to the journey itself in educational experiences. In that sense, the sailing cargo ship is more than a transport. It is a mirror of our priorities, our habits, and the compromises we are, or are not, willing to make to align our climate commitments with our actions. The real question is not whether all students will cross the Atlantic by sail tomorrow, but whether we are ready to acknowledge the climate cost of mobility – and to experiment, even at small scale, with alternatives.

At the same time, one of France’s pioneers in wind-powered shipping, the Le Havre-based TOWT, filed for bankruptcy in early April. And on April 1, 2026, the French National Assembly began discussions on a proposed law to accelerate the development of wind-powered maritime transport. This pioneering and promising sector needs public support – but also backing from French society – to continue growing, and position France as a global leader in this emerging industry. What better way than a “wind-powered Erasmus” to support shipowners while allowing students to reconcile their desire to explore the world with environmental constraints?

Why Is this Model Difficult to Scale?
Over the past 30 years, low-cost airlines have expanded rapidly, helping to democratize access to air travel. Why not imagine “low-cost” transatlantic crossings at €1,000?

One might envision large sailing ships carrying 200 or 300 passengers, with basic accommodation, pay-as-you-go services, dynamic pricing. In short, the Ryanair of the seas. The analogy is appealing but faces a structural reality: the main cost of maritime travel is not energy, but the “floating hotel, meaning crew, safety, catering, maintenance, and vessel depreciation.
Even reducing fuel consumption by 75% thanks to wind only lowers total costs by 10 to 20%. The real levers are passenger density and journey duration – two parameters that are tightly constrained on transatlantic routes. Unlike airplanes, ships cannot simply increase rotation frequency.